


fringe omens (for lack of a better title)

by alphinLacrimous



Category: Fringe (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (different sam weiss), Car Accidents, Fringe Spoilers, Jewish Identity, Just clarifying, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), Other, Spoilers, autistic child oc, autistic walter bishop, autistic william bell, basically good omens but kabbalistic jewish, because im autistic i make the rules, but like a sam weiss from before, but no spoons, everyone is autistic, i will add more tags when spoons, if you dont want william bell backstory spoiled for you turn back now, like not the canon sam weiss, like sam weiss from canon is prob a baby at this point, so many fringe spoilers, this one owns an ice cream shop with occasional food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphinLacrimous/pseuds/alphinLacrimous
Summary: love good omens but think "this could use some work" and by work i mean Science and Judaism?love fringe but depressed that the series ended?do u like autistic characters? and also weird science stuff? (the fringe watching kinda makes that a given but-)-THEN THIS FIC MIGHT YES how is it
Relationships: William Bell & Walter Bishop
Kudos: 1





	fringe omens (for lack of a better title)

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i havent seen the entirety of good omens, nor have i seen Fringe for a year or so since it ended but ive memorized every moment of it in my heart so it is simply going to have to Be A Thing that i also
> 
> oh yes also related before i forget ive only seen the first evangelion series. probably vaguely relivent in that ill be- wont fcorrect that typo keep going i trust you- probably using a lot f evangelionesque theology and names.
> 
> which, on the most part will be incidental and have nthing to do with it ACTUALLY be eva inspired other than descriptiuons of trueform, which likely for this will be only headspace descriptiuons and other very neurodivergent shit, because im hella fuckey autistic and my lifes experience as a jewish autistic is very complicated in that i have Very Sciency Religious Beliefs
> 
> idk just get used to the idea that unless youve also watched or are bingewatching fringe this will be A Nonsensical ride, im just writing it for my jewish autistic science ass since Good Omens lacks the distinct Oppressively JEwish Religious Imagery that lives rent free in my head at all times
> 
> yes im stuck at home having tested positive for coronavirus im not sure how the fuck since i practically wear a mask to sleep, but this is all the anxious energy i have in that I? idk i guess im like suddenly realizing I Might Die At Any Moment in general, not just because of the Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour,. so uh! yeah im really want ro write this

Bell takes offense to the way, without fail, Sam always seems to have a strawberry milkshake waiting for him. It leaves the expectation that he has to pay for it, which of course he always does, but there’s something about being Waited On to begin with that doesn’t sit right with him.

He’s nothing. Really. being Afforded this Binah coursing through his Being like a constant reminder that he is Other, that people resemble things as Not Equal, reminds him of the concept of racism. reminds him there are people that are simply considered different. mostly, it makes him wonder why he has to be special while he watches others turned away for having the same nose, the same skin, the same beliefs, the same neurodivergences, the same gender identity. Not that Bell would ever willingly offer up that last bit of information, feeling as if he hasn’t earned a neutral pronoun while everyone else suffers.

It’s not an exercise in self-flagellation, as judaism expressly forbids. it is simply an Unfairness that exists, partially just the way human culture Shaped itself, that he simply detests.

He supposes there’s something to be said for the introduction of balance into his Being. After being constantly strummed along the same note of Inclination his entire life, it feels like freedom more than he’d care to admit.

But the Binah that follows with that new Inclination change, the Balance between good and evil now filtering things in his mind, he swallows that down with the strawberry, a spoonful of sugar for his medicine.

This doesn’t happen to Messengers unless their Inverse is dead.

And Bell _thinks._

Wonders what it must be like on the Other Side, wonders what the difference is between the Two. For a dark, forbidden moment, he has a thought he instantly crushes, a consideration that he wishes he could also make little experiments like this, two isolated sides with their own careful influences causing subtle differences, comparing and contrasting two entire universes different only in human choice on his own. Even just the thought of having his own Creation, making his own Decisions independent of the Blood of his Veins, the Divine Impulse.

It’s beyond sacrilegious. But the thought is crushed before he can even examine it further, out of Self and Instinct.

Later, he’ll lose this inhibition, slowly but surely. But for now, he only dabbles in the newly-grown Self-Doubt and Forbidding Himself Proper Pronouns, because for now that is the only thing keeping him grounded.

He still hasn’t addressed the Child sitting next to him, all brown hair and scrapes, no eye contact anywhere to be seen. He doesn’t feel like remembering the past three days, only that he’s got new scars and stole a child.

And more importantly, he Doesn’t Belong Here.

This is not his beautiful bar, this is not his beautiful child, and he might ask himself, how did he get here?

“Thinking too loud. Shut up”

The child talks. For some reason he didn’t think they would.

“…I watched you die. You ok? Are you you?”

He doesnt answer. just looks at the table. sips the strawberry milkshake. looks at Sam as he slides mint ice cream with chocolate chip forward, and upon seeing Bell sipping the milkshake gravely… he gives him a sudden, immediate, shockedsad and knowing look.

“…You like strawberry… Willum no chunks. Give,,, mine, smih-…”

Bell freezes, looks down at the mint chocolate chip, looks back at the child struggling with words that won’t come, but they feel like they need to anyway.

Pushes the milkshake towards them, watches them sip the same straw with an exhaustion that a seven year old has no right to carry alone.

The mint unceremoniously graces his tongue. He grimaces at the cold on synthetic cold double sensation his cold humanish meat brain is tickled with, unceremoniously and reflexively spitting the mouthful back into the dish of ice cream as the discomfort of almost false minty burns through sensory and brain like acid.

“…same. No try. Seed good.”

Bell and the child share a Look. Not directly, sort of cheekbone-nose-side adjacent, as both were wont to do with a shared intensity.

“Not him. Ih,,, ih.” the child points at a spot on their shirt, wriggling a finger back and forth, then struggles. It’s something endearing until the child straight up slams the table repeatedly with flat hands, something that looks painful, and Bell simply yelps and slips both hands underneath the child’s so theyre at least hitting something soft, neglecting the mint and strawberry now spilling everywhere. Sam arrives unspoken and calm, because of-fucking-course he does, and places a hand towards the child, but directly Not Touching, as if he suddenly Knows Better.

“IHH!! EIH.” the child points at the nametag, proper plastic printed Sam Weiss but clearly older than the current Sam wearing it, and that Binah fills his senses.

But Bell can’t truly formulate a response, too overwhelmed by even the moment occurring to realize there’s probably a response expected. Overwhelmed. Useless. Bell figured that all college students eventually felt this, but the fact that the feeling was finally hitting felt a lot more welcome.

A breath. Now he can’t even think to move his mouth or lungs right. The idea of how to move them is there, but there’s a wall between them clearly far more solid than the boundary between the Two Worlds that (until recently) Bell had always assumed was a permanent fixture.

He didn’t even know that, conceptually, Hara and Hatov could share the same universe in their respective forms of division, that you could set the two human halves together simply like a mirror _without_ the glass dividing them.

And he smells the cloying blood smell and sees the glass and sees Himself on the other side of shattered glass once again, dead and dead and so very gone, just a shell left behind by a hermit crab that outgrew it, something too heavy for him to carry with him. Where did it go? Where did they go if they weren’t the Humans, the ones with the free will? He’s never formed a scientific hypothesis for this, never categorized it in a neat box for his shattered mind to contextualize later, never wrapped Veins around its Shape to Consume a truer Binah of what was happening. His meat flesh hands are trembling as his Being glances down through the tunnel that is perception through meat lenses, failed and fickle and fragile.

“Hih. He? Nuh.”

There’s sounds. He dimly registers them but only in the sense one registers the blinking red indicating missed calls on an answering machine, feeling that moment instead as the nearly silent yet still half screaming child reaches up to his battered hands with infinite unwarranted trust, and there’s the chemical reaction of saline flushing out toxins, pushing cold sensation onto the warm meat on the outside of the skull he know he’s sitting in, just sitting, not interacting, just trying desperately to become one with this moment again, with the fragile aging collection of cells he’s desperately trying to inhabit.

_Water dissolving. And water removing._

He follows the cold feeling.

_There is water at the bottom of the ocean._

Reality must always assert itself, as it always does. Natural as existing.

_Under the water, carry the water._

But Cold in itself is a natural state of Being At Rest. It doesnt help. There’s something Warm and Flickering, like a butterfly, and he follows that instead.

_Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean?_

The meat coldness fades away then, and there’s something slightly defining itself.

_Water dissolving? Water removing?_

It’s a hand. Or a couple of hands. Apparently Sam’s wiping away the mess from earlier while a smaller hand holds a napkin somewhere adjacent to his face. His face. He guesses. It must be his, he’s the only one living there in the moment, who else would be there? Though he’s not always there, never has had an easy time of Being All There. The kid must know this feeling somehow, patting different points of the Meat They Live In for some sort of response.

“…Stawbur for thim.”

“Strawberry for him too? Yeah, o”

“THIM”

“-Kay? Them? Him or them?” Sam asks Bell this, but doesn’t actually make eye contact like he usually does. It’s so much better like this, why did he never think to ask for this shit for himself ever, even when he only knew the Inclination To Do Good? Was he broken? Or did he just, tragically misunderstand his identity? Never examined the undercurrent of it?

Bell examines the thought more noticeable, that they’ve known each other all of five seconds and already this child has demanded more respect from other people than he ever has for himself.

A shrug. “I suppose whatever your regular customer uses.” He gestures at himself, hoping to keep up the facade, grimacing as Sam gives him a Look.

“I’ve Been here before. You, of all Things, must Know that I’ve Been Here Before. I know the Difference. I don’t need to Know what happened to 'Best Willums', I’m asking your pronouns cause the lil' chicken nugget here Demanded I Did. I don’t fuck around when That Kid tells me what to do. Something feels like I’d just be Wrong if i disagreed.”

A forced faced thats supposed to be a smile crawls its way across Bell’s face. It ends up more like a grimace of severe pain, as Bell’s assigned corporality is wont to do when it’s forced to make Human Facial Expressions When It Can’t Remember How. Though Bell feels they ought to be concerned that they can Hear the Capital Letters in the same way one Feels when you bite on a fork, the feeling of when part of you collides painfully with an Immutable Universal Fact instead of a normal word. A little how this child’s presence feels, to be quite honest. Avoids mentioning Sam of all people just cursed in front of a child, but that doesn't... feel like a problem in this case.

“I feel like ‘they’ is something i shouldn’t get used to hearing. I guess you could call me just Bell for convenience’s sake, though i doubt anyone will notice a huge difference as that is both our last names. If I’m remembering how the Laws work. It’s all fuzzy guesswork when you’re…”

Vague Gesture.

“-I KNEW IT!”

Bell nearly explodes from their meat in a horrifying mess of arterial spray, but decides against it. Sam would kill him if he ruined the ice cream shop. Though, they sort of just “what the fuck” internally, and it must show on the meat proper if Sam is making that face, if Bell can even figure out what that means.

Sam goes still for a moment, blinks, looks like he’s internally cursing.

“…I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. I mean. Kid hasn’t decided if they like gender either, but Willum always used ‘she’ for the kid…convenience’s sake? Like you said? I figured that had to come from somewhere, but Willum never gave any damn impression he had any idea what manners were when it came to gender equality. I feel like he always had to tamp down who he _was_ , yknow? And I wondered, like, is it suppressed gender curiosity cause of his kid, is he jealous? What? I dunno, something about it just always felt. Something. Sorry I’m rambling, pally. Don’t mean to make a habit of it. Just trying to Not Let On How Much I Know.”

And a response is probably expected. But Bell has nothing, save for following the turn of their own head as the bell tinkles, and a bundle of curly ringlets bounces in the door, shaking rain out and throwing a coat across the room at a chair.

“Belly. Belly belly belly.” The child only known as Chicken Nugget chants at the jingle of the bell, hands flopping in the air as they bounce.

The stranger grins at that, and Bell’s brain does a little confused flip-flop. One that they Know what it means but don’t Want to know what it means.

“Heyy! Pudding, if you don’t mind, Gamgee, I’m Famished. Hows the bestest lil chicken nuggey in the world!! Oh, Walt- Wilt- Wormwood- Wesleydale? Ohhh I am Terrible with Names I Know it but I cant Say it, you know how I explained- WILL WILL! I had to use the word Will like something you do but i Did It be proud of me you ding-dong!”

Bell blinks at the tight hug he’s cradled in. The shorter man is in one of those ridiculous sweaters you see on Harvard students that are either too poor to afford heat and trying to blend in, or showing off their wealth and completely impervious to overheating, and they can’t tell which one is sadder. Nope, no definitely the second one is worse. Maybe not sadder, but definitely worse.

“Oh please, call me Sam, Gamgee was my father!!” Sam chirps back at the stranger with what must be a 5 cent pudding cup already opened with a for-serious plastic spoon in it. Which the stranger is already wolfing down. Sam sideways-blinks at Bell with a subtle nod before berating the newcomer. “Whoa, Walter pal, slow down, I don’t wanna have to clean up like after the Red Vines fiasco.”

Bell just blinks back at Sam like a “thank you” and heavily thwumps Walter on the back when he starts immediately choking on his spoon. It helps, luckily.

“…Oh Well- uhWill-, while- while I have you here I know you don’t usually talk college off campus, but if you don’t mind sharing some input on a terrific experiment I’m planning to use for one of my theses? I’m considering where I could track down some butterflies that wouldn’t mind a touch of LSD, but regardless it’s a mapping of motor pathways that would directly mimic the-”

“Belly.”

Both of them turn to the ignored child that’s now slapping the table lightly.

Without even thinking or flinching, Bell finds themself crossing the room and flicking the bell on the door. Chicken Nugget immediately bounces and screeches abnormally for typical children. Bell LOVES it. It’s weird and chaotic and while a certain jewish beanpost of a consciousness masquerading as a human would have loved to hear the rest of that science experiment, literally no one in the room remembered anything about it because there was a child that liked the bell sound, and Walter and Bell were currently wearing out Sam’s poor door making it jingle over and over again.

“NO!”

Oh. That was wrong? Both of them froze comically, the door slapping Walter on (presumably) his? ass as he stumbled and would have flopped on the floor if Bell hadn’t instinctually caught him.

“NAME BELLY”

Walter brightens as if just realizing he’d been selected for the lottery, or having just found a cure for polio. Which probably already existed, Bell just couldn’t remember offhand, but-

“Little Nugget you are the SMARTEST! Belly is a Word I use all the time so I can’t Lose it in my head, you are SO smart you little chicken strip you are the BEST Thank you so much! Hi Belly! Bell Belly. Belly bell.”

“…Well I’m glad we found a solution to that. Good. Belly it is. Bell, I mean. Fair turnabout is i should give you a nickname t- OH have you considered using Monarchs for the experiment? I find the results yield far more stable results with something that has a very notable and distinct pattern, if you’re truly looking to analyze only the reaction and not the actual variations in insects, since several other species have a high yield of-”

Sam rolled his eyes and set out two more pudding packs, another strawberry milkshake for the other two, and dumped an entire bag of chicken nuggets in the frier. At least now Walter could yell science at someone other than him for an hour. Insh-llah.

**Author's Note:**

> for context on the end word, im not comfortable typing out Any Of The Names Of G-d cause i need to be able to edit/delete this and i aint up for having to figure out the logistics of trying to bury a copy of the Sacred Name in any iteration while still-
> 
> yknow what im gonna shoosh now sorry bout that haha


End file.
